A Memorial Day In A Memorable Way

May 19, 1986|By Thom Duffy of The Sentinel Staff

Memorial Day is definitely not another manic Monday. This first holiday of summer traditionally includes barbecues and beach trips -- and radio specials. Orlando's radio programmers have already made their holiday weekend plans.

The radio highlight of the weekend will be the three-hour live national broadcast of Hands Across America, beginning at 1 p.m. Sunday. Organizers of Hands Across America hope to have 6 million people link hands from New York to Los Angeles Sunday in a fund-raising event to fight hunger in the United States.

The broadcast will feature news reports and commentary on the event and the hunger issue.

The broadcast will be heard locally on WKIS-AM (740). At 3 p.m., those in line along the 16-state route will extend their hands and raise their voices to sing ''We Are the World,'' ''Hands Across America,'' and ''America the Beautiful.'' The closest the route will come to Florida is Memphis, Tenn.

WKIS has held a contest to send two listeners to the line, and the winners will be selected at noon today. They will leave Friday for Cincinnati. As guests of WKIS's sister station, WARM-FM, they'll join the human chain in that city Sunday.

Here's a sampling of other radio features on next weekend:

Between midnight Thursday and Monday evening, album-rock station WDIZ-FM (100.3) will run a countdown of the 1,003 -- count 'em, 1,003 -- top rock songs culled from listeners' suggestions.

Since Memorial Day traditionally marks summer's start, contemporary-hits station WHLY-FM (106.7) will play songs from the Beach Boys throughout the weekend. WHLY also will offer chances to win tickets to an upcoming Beach Boys show in Jacksonville.

Adult-contemporary station WSTF-FM (101.1) will air The Dionne Warwick Story Sunday from 9 p.m. to midnight, tracing the singer's success from her Hal David/Burt Bacharach hits like ''Walk On By'' to her recent AIDS benefit single, ''That's What Friends Are For.''

According to Willie Clark, program director at WOKB-AM (1600), the black/ urban contempory-hits station will mix additional oldies from the '60s and '70s into the playlist this weekend.

They say it's your birthday: Saturday will mark the 62nd anniversary of WDBO-AM (580). The station, which signed on the air on May 24, 1924, is the second-oldest radio outlet in Florida, according to Broadcasting Yearbook. (WQAM-AM in Miami Beach signed on in 1921). This week, WDBO will be airing listeners' recollections of the station over the past many years.

FM 90, plus some: WMFE-FM (90.7) has boosted its signal east of Orlando with equipment known as a translator, located near Cocoa Beach.

Although the public radio station has a 100,000 watt signal, listeners in eastern Brevard County have had trouble pulling it in. With a one-watt signal, the translator rebroadcasts WMFE at 90.1 FM, so listeners in that area can tune to that spot on the dial for better reception, according to Joe Hearn, the station's vice president of operations.

Whither the Dancing Bear? A performer whose show survived on network television for nearly 30 years may have a good shot at a comeback on public TV. Bob Keeshan hopes so.

That will be the topic of The Larry King Show Tuesday at 11 p.m. on WMMA-AM (990) and WNDB-AM (1150), when King interviews Keeshan, better known as Captain Kangaroo.